By Damià Bonmatí (Telemundo News) Lara Fernández and
Julia Ainsley
(NBC News)
It took Pedro half an hour to realize that the chemical had burned his skin.
This Guatemalan immigrant cleans up the bloody floors of a meat processing plant in Kansas at dawn: "The body is hot," he explains about the heat, the steam and the loud noise that surrounds him every night, "when I realized everything was already Burned".
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Pedro is 16 years old and works for the company Packer Sanitation Services (PSSI), which was investigated by the federal government and agreed to pay a million-dollar fine for exploiting minors at its plants in various states.
In February the company announced that it had fired all employees suspected of being minors.
But Pedro continues to work there with false papers;
the company has said it uses the federal E-Verify system to verify the identities of its employees, and suggested that minors are to blame for lying about their ages.
In a separate statement, PSSI admitted that it was the company's duty to fix the problem.
When he was burned, and although his wound was raw, the first thing Pedro thought about was finishing his shift.
“He was the strongest chemist,” he recounted during a joint journalistic investigation by Noticias Telemundo and NBC News.
Fearing that he would lose his job and not be able to support himself or his family, this teenager asked to use a false name to hide his identity.
"They tell you that you have to hurry up"
The work that Pedro does, removing the remains of the carcasses of dead cows and scrubbing the blood from the machines and the floor, is illegal for persons under 18 years of age in the United States.
Federal law prohibits the employment of minors in night work and also when they are in meat processors where there is dangerous machinery.
The interior of an unidentified slaughterhouse where Department of Labor investigators found children illegally cleaning overnight.US Department of Labor
“It is dangerous because of the chemicals and machines.
The smell [of the chemical] is very strong,” he explains.
His burn was bad and he thinks it will leave a scar.
The cleaning products he works with cause him to cough, itchy eyes, and constant throat clearing.
Noticias Telemundo and NBC News verified his age, saw the false documents with which he works as an adult, and the deep wound that remains on his skin.
“I work in cleaning, where the cows rule.
And I have to wash all the blood from the cattle, ”she explains proudly.
After more than a year there, the blood and strong smell no longer hit him, he says.
He also boasts of his speed, so much so that his bosses do not call his attention: "In ten minutes I take out five wheelbarrows of bait."
He says that he works up to seven days a week, at dawn, usually from 11 pm to 6 am.
"They tell you to do things quickly and tell you that you have to hurry up."
If they don't achieve the required cleaning speed, "they scold us," he says.
[The company that exploited more than 100 children to clean slaughterhouses twice employed a minor with different names]
The Department of Labor concluded in February that more than 100 underage immigrants worked for PSSI in meat processors in various Midwestern states.
The company agreed to pay a $1.5 million fine and pledged in court not to employ any more minors.
The company, which declined to give an interview to Noticias Telemundo and NBC News, admitted in writing that it is responsible for solving this problem and announced measures such as increasing the preparation of its managers.
Last week it also changed its executive director (the new one, Tim Mulhere, will take his position at the end of April) and announced the creation of a $10 million fund to end child labor.
He also said he will use a former Customs and Border Protection award-winning agent to teach courses on identity theft.
PSSI's reaction
PSSI asked NBC News and Noticias Telemundo to reveal Pedro's identity so he could be fired immediately, but Pedro asked these news networks to hide his identity for fear of the consequences if his employer, his coyote, or the government federal identified him.
Faced with the refusal, PSSI said it would redouble its efforts to find him.
“As we have repeatedly stated, we have a longstanding policy of zero tolerance against the employment of anyone under the age of 18 and we do not want a single minor to work for our company – period,” a PSSI spokeswoman told us in writing.
The company did not grant an on-camera interview.
“We have taken extensive steps to continue to strengthen our procedures to enforce that absolute ban, including new training to detect identity fraud.
But the unfortunate reality for our company, as well as many other employers today in the midst of the unaccompanied minor crisis at our country's border, is that we are increasingly subject to sophisticated identity theft attempts to try to circumvent our extensive compliance measures,” the company wrote.
Federal authorities suspect that the employment of minors is a widespread practice in the meat industry.
The discovery of dozens of them cleaning in the plants and Pedro's testimony illustrate the work faced in hiding by some of the migrant minors who arrived alone in the United States in recent years.
The illegal labor of migrant children "is an open secret" that has been going on for a long time in the US.
Feb 28, 202304:01
More than 330,000 arrived in the past three years, according to Customs and Border Protection, which transfers custody to the Department of Health and Human Services.
This was the case with Pedro who, after arriving from Guatemala in 2021, spent time in the custody of federal authorities in a shelter and was later released with an adult who promised to take care of him.
[Slaughterhouse company that hired migrant children announces $10 million fund to combat child labor]
Guatemalan-born pastor Joel Tuchez, who lives in Kansas, knows a dozen young men who worked as cleaners in meat processors.
“They are stealing their adolescence.
At that age they have to be in a class, playing soccer, having their first kiss, having their first girlfriend, not seeing how they pay a debt, ”he laments.
The pastor stresses that child labor, for example on sugar plantations, is common in Guatemala and that these minors grow up with a culture of sacrifice and work at home from a very young age.
Tuchez says that in the Latino community in Kansas itself, there are members who profit from the new immigrants by offering smuggling services and selling false social security numbers to be able to work in the processors.
“Some have learned how to do it and sadly dedicate themselves to it,” she says.
"Anyone is willing to pay a (high) price because there is a debt to pay."
Although he prefers not to investigate who they are so as not to be an accomplice to this illegal activity.
Pedro, better paid than other undocumented immigrants who also work clandestine jobs, sends between $500 and $600 a week to his family in Guatemala — an amount so high that he has left over to pay for his lunch and little else.
With his salary cleaning for more than a year, he has already paid the equivalent of about $20,000 in coyotes, both to the one who brought him in 2021 and to a relative of his who recently traveled the same path, also a minor and also only.
tired in class
When he gets off his early-morning shift, he has just over an hour to eat breakfast, shower, and get ready before heading off to class.
Tired and sleepless, he is often given a lift to high school, where he has trouble concentrating but feels lucky to be able to go.
"It's hard for me because I leave very tired and sleepy."
He says that his teachers know that he combines work and classes.
Teachers notice when students have worked nights, Diana Mendoza, who runs a migrant education program in a Kansas school district, told us.
“They don't rest well and they arrive the next day at school.
They arrive tired from having studied and worked all day before.
You can see them physically: it may be that they lower their heads, that they try to rest a bit there at school, but it is also noticeable when the teacher is giving the instruction”, Mendoza describes.
[They accuse a company of recruiting 31 minors of Hispanic origin to clean slaughterhouses in three plants]
Of the 40 students enrolled in his program, 35 are in Kansas without a direct parent, he says.
That is, they came to the United States alone.
Most of them live with older brothers, uncles, acquaintances or other members of the community who become what is popularly called 'sponsors'.
An experienced government investigator had "never" seen so many abuses against children as in this case
Feb 23, 202302:09
The most common mission of these boys is to work to raise money for their families in the country of origin but also for their relatives established in the United States.
“We have heard situations in which students feel they have to work because they owe money to their sponsors or to those who brought them to the United States,” Mendoza explained to Noticias Telemundo and NBC News.
The debt owed to the coyotes that brought them to the United States may fall on them and they need to pay it off with their efforts working in meat processors.
laid off workers
After leaving their night job, Noticias Telemundo and NBC News spoke with about twenty cleaning workers, who identified themselves as PSSI employees.
They confirm most of the details about the work that Pedro recounted and explain that there were layoffs since the end of 2022.
Those laid off were the immigrants who appeared to be younger, the workers told us, who also commented on how difficult it is to know the real age since immigrants without authorization to work generally use false documents, with identities and ages that do not correspond to the ones his.
Pedro has seen how his colleagues from work and school lost their jobs: "They were sad because there are some who do not live with their parents, like me, and it is very difficult for them to pay their rent and their lunches," he said.
– What is the moment of the day that is most uphill for you, the most difficult?
- we asked him.
– For me all the time because… I'm alone.
Very difficult for me, then.
NBC News writers
Laura Strickler
,
Didi Martinez
and Brock Stoneham contributed to this report
